A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
